A message from European Students to Iranian Students

Text of Speech by Bert Vandenkendelaere, Executive Committee Member, European Students' Union (ESU) at Delft University on 5 December 2009

Dear fellow students,

Dear friends of the Iranian Student Movement,

The European Students’ Union has been shocked after hearing the newest forms and facts of repression of the Iranian student movements, repression of any kind of student self-government and leadership they could use to stand up for their student rights.

The European Students’ Union, abbreviated as ESU, is an umbrella organization with 48 member unions from 39 different countries representing over 11 million students in higher education. ESU is representing these 11 million student voices in the Bologna Process Follow Up Group, as a dialogue partner of the European Commission and the European Union, but also of UNESCO and the OECD. But to be honest, a modest estimation tells me that not even half of the students ESU is representing is aware of the dangers and oppressions their Iranian colleagues have to fear each day in their struggle for better – or even for any - education in their country. From those who know about the situation, only very few have access to information on what is happening in Teheran and around, very few have a real view on the situation.

Over 90 students including top student leaders have been arrested over the past three weeks. Many are held incommunicado, probably in solitary confinement, and likely under torture and ill-treatment, facing charges of threatening national security. These students are mainly concerned about enjoying their fundamental rights and academic freedom. What is more, Iranian universities, acting as arms of state intelligence forces, have expelled or suspended scores of students for their peaceful student activism.

I consider myself lucky and I am very honoured to be amongst those very few students in Europe that have had an opportunity to receive direct informationon the situation, and I am thus motivated enough to try to help ignite the struggle for their rights in Europe. However I - and with me the European Students’ Union – will not pretend to have a clear view on the Iranian reality myself. ESU receives regular updates from student representatives that have fled to Europe or that have been active in a far past. Through a lot of sideways we get in touch with Iranian students on campus and for example for our joint OBESSU - ESU recent three day International Students’ Day Conference in Brussels, in which also the Commissioner for Higher Education and the vice-president of the European Parliament have attended, we have been able to show a video message from an Iranian student.

For our 18th European Students Convention in Stockholm, Sweden, mid-October this year, we have received a report of the situation from the Nationwide Iranian Students Union, informing about the killings after the post-election demonstrations in June and from then on the arrests of almost all of the members of their Office for Fostering Unity . In the end of their message the language becomes quite cold and horrifying yet still optimistic :

“Dear friends, whatever was explained was merely a brief list of the on-going atrocities in the universities of Iran. We still do not know how many of our friends have been killed, we still do not know how many are detained in the prisons of the country. Suppression, to its extreme, still happens in the universities. However we, students and academics, like all the people of Iran, emphasize our rights for freedom of speech, freedom of assembly and forming unions, and academic and research freedoms. Meanwhile we ask for the support of our colleagues across the world. Your support will strengthen us greatly in pursuit of our goals.”

The European Students’ Union can only guess how this agony, these students call reality, can feel like and can only express its deepest, deepest empathy with what they have to face. The student representatives in Europe will try everything within their power to help their colleagues in Iran, but the problem is that everything within their power is not enough.

The information we receive stays rather rare and one of the biggest challenges the Iranian oppression of students, and this movement we are part of today, faces to move the European students for their cause is the lack of interest, maybe because of the lack of eye-openers from Iran. Apathy from the side of students on the grass root level of our student movement, lack of information, thus lack of ownership from the side of student representatives on the local, but even on the national level.

It is our ambition, and I ask you today to share that ambition, to weather this apathy, to start disseminating information on the violation of the human rights in Iran, of which the European Students’ Union with the adoption of its Students’ Rights Charter considers students’ rights as a crucial aspect. Students’ rights to education are deprived because students engage in student representation or activism. Students’ access to education is banned because they exercised their right of free speech and their right of free assemblage. Students can no longer be students because they speak out.

The 7th of December is National Student Day in Iran, when students are expected to demonstrate for their fundamental rights, and when, regrettably, they may face severe repression.

The European Students’ Union and with this 11 million students ask the responsible authorities from as well UNESCO as OECD as the European Commission to react against the continuing deprivation of students’ rights and democratic youth movement in Iran. It is easy to be silent. It is necessary to speak out loud this time.

Those students in Iran are still hopeful and they keep on going, with or without our support. But let us not be responsible for the prolongation of their fight. Think for yourself if you have done enough, if you have done whatever you were able to do… We have done the same and we have concluded that ESU can do more. Attending this day and delivering this message is a token of our concern, and a proof of our commitment to the Iranian cause. It is not only this, but it has to be the start of more work from ESU’s side, more support letters and more media attention. Although we can’t dedicate any financial resources, we can dedicate human resources, time of student representatives to study the situation and inform our members in 39 different countries about it, convincing them to react and stand up as well. When democracy, fundamental rights of free speech and free assemblage or the students’ right to higher education are attacked, we are too silent.

Dear fellow students, we will speak up and we will not give up until we overcome.